They’re cleaning up Dick Turpin’s grave. But is he under there?

Whether you consider him a highwayman of legend, or a low-down thief and murderer, there is no question that Dick Turpin is world famous.

For someone of such international infamy, his last resting place is unremarkable. A scuffed square of stone in the easily missed St George’s Churchyard on George Street, his grave is marked by a headstone dedicated to “John Palmer otherwise Richard Turpin, the notorious highwayman and horse stealer”.

It’s pretty large – but then legend has it Turpin was buried with his horse Black Bess (although in reality he never owned a horse of that name).

But there’s quite a large question mark as to whether dastardly Dick is even under his tombstone…

What we do know

Essex-born Dick Turpin was a member of a violent gang of thieves. He became a highwayman when the others were arrested and, as the authorities closed in on him, shot a man dead in Epping Forest in 1737.

He fled to Yorkshire under the assumed name John Palmer, and was imprisoned at Beverley for shooting a man’s cockerel in October 1738.

Turpin was transferred to York Castle jail when evidence emerged linking him to the more serious crime of stealing horses.

At the end of March 1739 he was tried at York Assizes, convicted and condemned to death.

Jail and execution

According to Katherine Prior, researched the York Castle Prison project for the Castle Museum in 2009, jail wasn’t all bad for Dick.

“In the daytime he could receive visitors, and many of his acquaintances from his months of living in Yorkshire, along with the generally curious, came to see him.

“Either he or they purchased a good deal of wine from the gaoler – Thomas Griffith – to lubricate their visits, as it was said that the gaoler made £100 from such sales.”

He brought a frockcoat and shoes to look stylish for his execution. On Saturday, April 7, 1739, he was taken from the jail to the gallows at Knavesmire.

He paid five mourners to follow his cart and chatted calmly to his executioner for half an hour. Then he threw himself off the ladder and was dead within five minutes.

Where did the body go?

After Turpin’s body was cut down, it was laid out in the Blue Boar in Castlegate, where it attracted a crowd of curious onlookers.

Then, as preeminent Turpin scholar and York University professor James Sharpe recounts in his book Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English Highwayman: “At ten the next morning, Sunday 8 April, the body was buried ‘in a neat coffin in St George’s churchyard, within Fishergate postern’.

“Turpin had spent his three pounds ten shillings well, for ‘the grave was dug very deep, and the persons whom he appointed his mourners… took all possible care to secure the body’.”

But he didn’t rest in peace. Surgeons needed bodies for dissection classes and would regularly try to obtain the corpses of criminals for the purpose.

At 3am on the morning after the burial, some people were discovered moving Turpin’s body. But an angry mob chased after them and recovered it from a “garden house”. According to a contemporary pamphlet, they

“brought away the body through the streets of the city, in a sort of triumph, almost naked, being only laid on a board cover’d with some straw, and carried on four men’s shoulders, and buried in the same grave, having filled the coffin with slack’d [ie slaked] lime”.

In his book, Prof Sharpe reveals that city surgeon Marmaduke Palms was bound over at York Assizes for “causing to be taken up the body of Richard Turpin out of his grave”.

So is he under that gravestone?

Cans next to Turpin’s grave, and St George’s churchyard. Click to see a bigger image

“The short answer is that Turpin was buried in St George’s churchyard, but that it’s very implausible that where the current gravestone is actually marks the location of his original grave,” Prof Sharpe told YorkMix.

Why? “Because 1) the gravestone is fairly modern, and 2) the other gravestones in the graveyard all date from significantly later than Turpin’s death.”

“I’m anyway rather unconvinced that an executed felon would have had a marked grave in the 18th century, unless they were extremely upper class.”

He guesses that the current tombstone dates from the early 20th century.

Prof Sharpe says a “project for his retirement” is to research York newspapers from the time to look for reports on the marking of his grave, “which would help us understand the rationale of why it was decided to place the stone where it is (and, indeed, why they decided to mark the grave at all)”.

Unless someone else wants to take up this project sooner…?

And until then, remember that Turpin rides again every time there’s a race meeting at his place of execution, Knavesmire, as YorkMix‘s legendary (or should that be notorious) racing tipster…

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17 comments

Most of what is reported to have taken place after Turpin’s execution sounds feasible – bodies WERE often put on display, especially those of executed felons. And as far as body snatching goes, that doesn’t surprise me in the least, either. What DOES surprise me is that his body wasn’t just turned over to the anatomists after he was cut down from the gallows. That was a common practice then.

I am doubting, however, that Turpin is actually buried in that graveyard. Most executed felons were not afforded a burial in a church graveyard. In fact, this is another reason why bodies were hung in gibbets after hanging…these were a superstitious lot in the 18th century and the fear that anybody not buried in consecrated ground couldn’t enter Heaven was very real to them. People believed that if your body was hung up and not buried, etc. then you were condemned to wander the earth for all eternity, dragging heavy chains behind you. Picture Jacob Marley and the image becomes quite clear.

I don’t know of any records of Turpin’s body being dissected in any anatomy labs, but it’s likely his family buried him privately, somewhere.

My pleasure…it’s what I do for a living – I’m a historian. Write books, make documentary films, that sort of thing. I wonder if permission could be garnered to dig up that grave to see exactly what IS down there? Instead of calling it “body snatching,” you refer to it as “an archeological dig.” LOL. I wish I had the time to come over there and do some in-depth studies of the man. There must be some records of his family – where THEY are buried, it’s likely that’s where HE is buried, too. Probably a family plot, somewhere. I’ve seen the baptism record for Turpin, when he was an infant, and there MUST be a burial record on file somewhere, too.

This would make for a very interesting documentary – studying what’s inside the tomb. Going through his family’s records, etc. But, as fate would have it, I live in the US, so it’s not like I can just hop on over there and do this over the weekend. (I work for the Dept. of Defense in Virginia.)

I would like a question answered Dick Turpin was executed at Tyburn which I believe was located in Whitehall in London (where the cenotaph now is )
But his body ? Is in York I have visited the graveyard
Any help with this would be appreciated as I hate having unsolved mysterious
In anticipation of your reply

What i am going to tell you is true, i was in a band in the 80s & 90s and we used to do alot of gigs in York, one club we did in York i remember as if it was yesterday, we had just come of stage and bingo was on , the concert sec came in and said to us if we opened the dressing room window there was a grave where Dick Turpin was buried , we opened the window the headstone was next to the window in other words the dressing room was next to the grave yard , so me and the base player went to take a look i wish mobile phones were out as we would have taken a picture, It was a really old head stone , i can’t remember everything it said but it did say here lies Dick Turpin who also had is horse buried with him , the stone that i see now in other pics is not the same head stone , and i can’t remember the name of the club as it would be a help .

I pass St. Georges Cemetery every day and today it is a disgrace. Cans, paper bags, rubbish and more disgusting dog dirt. The paper sign ‘tied’ to the railings, warning of dogs fouling etc. was pulled off after one day. Isn’t it possible to have a camera installed to catch the ‘offenders’. I know it may be expensive in the long run BUT it could be recouped a hundred times over in fines. Just a thought.

The story of Turpin’s burial in St George’s Churchyard is almost certainly true. There are contemporary newspaper reports along with a couple of pamphlets, which although they most likely embelish the story, will have the basic facts in there as he was quite notorious and worthy of national coverage.

Prof Sharpe’s theory is most likely also. A newspaper reporter visiting in 1912 found ‘very little evidence of Turpin in York’, so if there was a grave marker there then you would expect him to record it. So sometime after then, my guess being around 1939, the bicentenary of the execution.

The newspaper reporter does say that a local ‘pointed out the site to me’. A further reference in1884 has a local saying he was told the position of the grave as a young boy, ‘to the right of where the church gate now is’.

Unfortunately nothing has ever been found in the church records to verify this (or perhaps fortunately as it gives us something to speculate about).

If you do ever come over to England to research Turpin Tamara you will also need to visit Hempstead in Essex, which is where he was born and baptised, the baptism being recorded in the church register there. My own connection to him is that for a time I lived in Thaxted, Essex, opposite a property that claimed to be the site of his butcher’s shop.

I sincerely hope that this project does not turn into a carnival and fiasco. My fear is that some bright spark will come up with the idea to excavate the grave, and we shall see, once again, a repetition of the idiocy that attended the inhumation of Richard III’s remains.

We should be wary of anyone who suggests such a potential scheme, waving the banner of academia or some other abstract religion. Might I suggest, that should the possibility rear its ugly head, such persons might be locked up in Turpin’s cell at York Castle, so that they might contemplate their feigned interest there.